Swaffham Town Council gifts land for new leisure centre

Swaffham has moved a big step forward to getting a new purpose-built leisure centre.

An extraordinary general meeting of the town council agreed last night to gift two acres of land between the Green Britain Centre and the A47 to Breckland Council to build the new 'dry' facility (ie without pool).

At present, public sports provision in the town is confined to a shared facility with Nicholas Hamond Academy. But that means it is not available 24-7 for townsfolk.

Ian Sherwood and fellow Conservative district councillor Ed Colman have today issued a joint statement welcoming the move.

They said: "We stood on a manifesto pledge to deliver improve leisure facilities for Swaffham residents and after a long search for a viable search we now have a real tangible option to deliver.

"For too long Swaffham hasn't had the leisure centre a growing town of its size demands and this is an important step in making progress towards a fit for purpose leisure offering for Swaffham residents.

"We are yet to confirm time-scales at this stage and there is still a lot of feasibility work to complete but we will be working with the officer team to move this forward as soon as possible.

"We would also like to thank Swaffham Town Council for their collaboration on this, their decision to work with us and potentially gift their land to the Breckland to benefit Swaffham residents shows just what we can do when we work together."

Fellow Breckland councillor David Wickerson said: "This is great news for Swaffham. We have been talking about this sports and leisure facility since 2019 I think, so hopefully it can now move forward."